Distributed contact information discovery and sharing

Abstract

A contact sharing system is described herein that allows multiple people to share their address books of contact information so that a person can search for contact information among the address books of the person's existing contacts in addition to any publicly available searchable sources of contact information. Because at least one of a person's contacts is likely to have contact information for the person or business that the person is trying to reach, searching the contacts of contacts is more likely to produce relevant search results than searching anonymous or public sources of contact information alone. Thus, the contact sharing system makes it easier for people to find contact information for people and businesses that they are trying to reach.

1 . A computer-implemented method for searching for contact information in response to a user request, the method comprising:
 receiving one or more contact search criteria for finding contact information;   identifying contacts of the user that initiated the search;   selecting a contact from the contacts of the user;   searching one or more contacts of the selected contact to determine whether a contact matches the received search criteria;   in response to identifying a matching contact, adding the matching contact to search results; and   providing the search results to the user in response to the user request,   wherein the preceding steps are performed by at least one processor.   
     
     
         2 . The method of  claim 1  wherein receiving one or more contact search criteria comprises receiving information known about a contact that includes a name. 
     
     
         3 . The method of  claim 1  wherein identifying contacts of the user comprises downloading a list of contacts from a central contact data store that the user is authorized to access. 
     
     
         4 . The method of  claim 1  wherein identifying contacts of the user comprises accessing a cached copy of a contact list on a device associated with the user. 
     
     
         5 . The method of  claim 1  wherein searching one or more contacts comprises sending a request to a central contact store to search one or more data structures for contacts that match the received search criteria. 
     
     
         6 . The method of  claim 1  wherein searching one or more contacts comprises searching the user's contacts recursively at multiple levels of depth to identify potential matches of the search criteria. 
     
     
         7 . The method of  claim 1  wherein adding the matching contact to search results comprises storing a list of identified search results to display to the user as the query progresses. 
     
     
         8 . The method of  claim 1  further comprising searching one or more public sources of contact information and combining the results with results from searching the user's contacts. 
     
     
         9 . The method of  claim 8  further comprising ranking the search results so that results from the user's contacts are ranked higher than results from the public sources of contact information. 
     
     
         10 . The method of  claim 1  wherein providing the search results comprises displaying a list of search results from which the user can select one or more results to contact the contact associated with the result. 
     
     
         11 . The method of  claim 1  wherein providing the search results comprises displaying a list of search results from which the user can select one or more results to add information about the contact into the user's list of contacts. 
     
     
         12 . The method of  claim 1  further comprising sending a notification to the source of the contact information associated with a search result to request permission to provide the contact information to the user. 
     
     
         13 . A computer system for discovering and sharing distributed contact information, the system comprising:
 a processor and memory configured to execute software instructions;   an authorization component configured to identify each user of the system;   a contact data store configured to store contact information received from multiple users and provide access to the contact information to multiple users;   a contact entry component configured to provide an interface for receiving contact information from a user;   a sharing component configured to receive access control information from one or more users associated with contact information and store the access control information in the contact data store;   a search component configured to search for contact information in response to a user request to find contact information for a particular person; and   a notification component configured to provide a notification to a holder of contact information identified by the search component, wherein the notification requests permission to provide the contact information to the user.   
     
     
         14 . The system of  claim 13  wherein the contact data store is centrally accessible so that multiple clients can access the data store from multiple locations. 
     
     
         15 . The system of  claim 13  wherein the contact data store operates in a distributed manner, such that multiple peers store contact information and connect to one another dynamically to access distributed contact information. 
     
     
         16 . The system of  claim 13  wherein the sharing component is further configured to receive access control information that specifies whether contacts of a user are visible to other users. 
     
     
         17 . The system of  claim 13  wherein the sharing component is further configured to receive access control information that specifies levels of access to contact information of a user including allowing contacts of the user to view each other's contact information, but not allowing other users of the system to view the user's contacts. 
     
     
         18 . The system of  claim 13  wherein the notification component is further configured to provide the notification through a Short Message Service message. 
     
     
         19 . The system of  claim 13  further comprising an update component configured to provide ongoing updates to contact information shared among multiple users. 
     
     
         20 . A computer-readable storage medium comprising instructions for controlling a computer system to share contacts of a user with other users, wherein the instructions, when executed, cause a processor to perform actions comprising:
 receiving a list of the user's contacts from a network accessible contact data store that stores relationships between users;   selecting at least one first contact in the received list.   receiving access control information from the user for the selected contact, wherein the access control information indicates whether other users can search the user's contacts to identify contact information for the selected contact;   receiving a notification indication that specifies whether the user wants to be notified when another user requests information from the user for the selected contact; and   storing the access control information and notification indication in the contact data store.